Vancouver: Hire Bikes and Stanley Park

Today kicked of slowly after a very, very sound sleep.

First stop was breakfast in a nearby café called the Salty Tongue... very wholesome bacon, eggs, sausages and home made backed beans... plus lots of very good espresso. Truly... Vancouver has been superlative in the food department. Just good food, well prepared, well served and for really reasonable prices.

Then it was back to the hotel to plan the rest of the day, which for me was a trek to Stanley Park.

Stanley Park: it's the large green area to the north west of downtown Vancouver (Image: Google Maps)

I picked up a hire bike from Reckless Cycles on Davie St, with the intention of following the sea wall all the way up False Creek and English Bay, under the Granville and Burrard St Bridges and around the whole peninsula. I didn't get to the hire shop till about two, so I thought I might need to keep the bike out overnight. I forked out for an overnight hire, and the guys set me up with the best hire bike I've ever used.

The resulting ride was a hoot...

The bike culture here is very developed and the general care taken and road sharing was a fabulous surprise. Even when I was a fair way into riding round the park in the wrong direction (the whole thing has to be done counter clockwise), when the RCMP finally pulled me over, their response was some gentle advice that I should turn around and head back, with a rather more stern warning that they didn't want to have to speak to me again.



English Bay Coast: This is one of the longest uninterrupted urban recreational paths in the world. It's fabulous.

 The park is host to everything from swimming, to mini concerts, an aquarium, sports, hula-hooping... you get the idea. Today, given the perfect weather, there must have been hundreds of thousands out on the small beaches lining the southern sea wall. Barbeques, games, music... it was a natural flash crowd that showed that the draw of a sunny day still has more reach than the instawebs could ever have.



Not So Ancient Rock Art: these things are scattered all around the south shore of the park.

Vancouver from Stanley Park

At the end of the day, the ride was so smooth and fast, I was able to return the bike by five and head home via one last espresso in Yaletown. Dinner followed, and a quick sojourn out to Granville Bridge to find Vancouver's elusive sunset.

Mainland St: Vancouver has managed to get a lot right, preserving some of the old fabric of the city with the new.

Dusk from Granville Bridge: after a few ales at the bar downstairs, I took the half hour walk to Granville Bridge to catch sundown.